FREOPP 2021 earnings · IPEDS 2023 cost · BEA 2023 cost-of-living · Maryland four-year schools, resident pricing · real-earnings-coverage only · every school shown is NPV-positive.

1 University of Maryland Global Campus · Adelphi · public +$3.08M
2 University of Maryland-College Park · College Park · public +$2.45M
3 Notre Dame of Maryland University · Baltimore · private +$1.90M
4 University of Maryland-Baltimore County · Baltimore · public +$1.32M
5 Bowie State University · Bowie · public +$1.28M
6 Coppin State University · Baltimore · public +$1.25M
7 Salisbury University · Salisbury · public +$1.19M
8 Towson University · Towson · public +$1.16M
9 Morgan State University · Baltimore · public +$998K
10 Johns Hopkins University · Baltimore · private +$931K
11 University of Baltimore · Baltimore · public +$834K
12 Frostburg State University · Frostburg · public +$732K
13 Stevenson University · Owings Mills · private +$556K
14 St. Mary's College of Maryland · St. Mary's City · public +$509K
15 Loyola University Maryland · Baltimore · private +$325K

How this is computed (and what it isn’t)

For each school we run the /worth-it calculator with the home state set to Maryland — resident tuition, plus foregone wages, capitalized loan interest, and BEA cost-of-living on the skip-college path. The ranking is the 30-year projected net value of going vs. skipping and investing the difference. It ranks schools, not majors — and the major you pick swings that payoff by over a million dollars on its own.

What it isn’t: a list of “good schools.” It’s a list of good trades at resident pricing. Schools without real FREOPP earnings coverage are excluded rather than estimated; institutions whose earnings roll up from fewer than 3 reported programs are excluded as too thin to rank; schools verified closed since the IPEDS 2023-24 vintage are excluded by hand. Only NPV-positive schools are listed — the point is where the value is, not naming losers.